by Mark Eller
* * *
Aaron dodged upon arriving inside the broch. The spear point thrust at his belly missed him by inches.
"Lieber!" one of the doorway guards shouted. Instantly, half a dozen spears stopped their deadly journey toward his body.
Aaron licked suddenly dry lips. The Clan watched him with suspicious eyes.
He gestured out to the plains just as the newly constructed catapult released its first load. The stone rose in a sharp arch that reached its peak too soon and fell fifty feet short.
In the distance, thunder rolled. A thick cloud of dust rested on the horizon. Bersalac was suddenly beside him, eyes questioning. Dried blood stained her leather top.
"You told me they were aggressive," Aaron said. "Those animals I called horned lemmings are on their way." He nodded toward the rising dust.
She gestured above his head. Aaron looked up to see a makeshift thick wooden door. Ropes ran from it, across several pivot points, and down to attach to protrusions set into the walls. The ropes were also connected to the pulley he'd used to lift the books to the ledge above.
"Step back," she called over the battle noise. She pointed at the door. "We need to drop that."
"Can we wait until as many as possible reach safety?" Aaron asked. He gestured toward the enemy soldiers.
Her look said she thought he was crazy.
"Most of those people are only following orders," Aaron begged.
Sarah had served in the guard. She might have followed orders she did not know were illegal and wrong.
"You are Death," Bersalac finally relented as the cloud of rising dust gained definition. "You are prophecy."
Pandemonium broke out when tossing horns became visible. Women and men ran, but almost none ran in the right direction. Bellows sounded, and Aaron watched as the first fringes of the Isabellan Guard disappeared into the rising dust.
About that time realization seemed to set in. A large contingent of guard milled uncertainly as the herd grew closer. A few looked toward the protection of the broch.
"Throw down your weapons!" Aaron shouted. Fearing his pleas would be unheard in the growing din, he gestured wildly. "Throw them down and you can come inside! Throw them down!"
But the closer ones heard. First one young woman and then another tossed aside their weapons and ran for the shelter. They were not killed when they entered, encouraging others who had not heard but did see. They ran, too. Some forgot to follow shouted orders or refused to drop their weapons. Arrows stuck them down, but those deaths did not deter the deluge of people running for the door. Hundreds of soldiers sought to live at any price. Yells and screams rent the air. Battering hooves pounded on earth.
Not every soldier made it. Dozens remained outside when Aaron was pulled back by insistent hands. Ropes were cut, and the wooden door fell into place. Bars were shoved into nocks, but the people outside were not abandoned. Bow strings hummed. Ropes were tossed out the windows. Aaron saw native hands pull an enemy guard to safety through a first level opening.
He could not see what happened outside. Too many people stood on the ledges and around the ladders.
He did not need to see. Terrible sounds pierced the walls and the open windows.
The door held---but barely--against battering and squeals and roars. Hooves and horns thudded against the door and walls. People screamed on the outside, short and sharp and soon silent.
"Guard!" Colonel Wheeler shouted. "Seize any weapon and resume the battle."
Aaron spun in place, but he was not needed. Neither were any of the clanspeople. First came the flash of a fist and then a thud, and Colonel Wheeler struggled as she was passed from guard to guard until she reached a ladder. The end of a rope was passed down, fastened around her. She was hauled up to the first ledge and then to the nearest opening. Aaron assumed she screamed as she was tossed out, but if she did, he did not hear her voice over the outside bedlam.
* * *
Later, inside the broch, a woman, a child, lay near him. People gathered around.
"Medic!"
"It's a sucking wound. We need to get it blocked fast."
"Will she live then?" Bersalac asked.
The guard's senior medic shook her head. "Probably not, but she'll have a better chance if we block it. Gods, there are so many of them."
"Merdan bac," whispered a wounded clanswoman. "Merdan bac."
"Hold on, gal," the medic replied. "We need to ease that arrow out of you. It'll hurt, but I swear I'll have the saving of you."
"I don't understand why they let us in here," a young guard said. "Why aren't they killing us now? Look at what we did."
A native answered. "That was war. This is not. The Bringer has said so."
"The Bringer?"
She gestured toward Aaron. "Death. It was foretold."
* * *
One hour after the last of the horned lemmings left the area, Aaron walked from the broch. He left the cries and the blood and the living behind and entered into the land of the dead.
The ground outside was churned and dark and littered with the broken bodies of humans and beasts. Aaron walked, and his body trembled. The rage that had built in him for so long dissipated into the mosquito-infested air.
Empty inside, he looked at one body and then another, searching for a familiar face amid the trampled and gored. He looked for Sergeant Anderson, a woman who had once admired him, who once wanted to be his friend, but he saw no signs of her.
He stared at one broken body, flattened flesh contained within a torn uniform. Almost nothing looked human, but fate had spared the guardwoman's head. Mud-haired and torn-cheeked, the head was blond and blue-eyed and had seen no more than sixteen years. It belonged to a once more-than-beautiful girl. Her last name, Aaron recalled, was Carbat. She had brought him an extra helping of chicken when he ate at the fort. At one time she had almost worshiped him.
Now she was dead.
She was dead, and too many others were dead. Dead men and dead women and dead animals surrounded him. On this day he had murdered the sworn servants of his adopted homeland.
This child, this blond and blue-eyed child, had died because he had been too slow and too stupid and too torn by his own concerns and selfish needs. If he had been here days or a week earlier, he might have stopped this terrible, terrible waste.
The Clan were right--he was Death. He was Death, and his soul bled invisible black blood of the damned.
"This one might make it, but her ribs are crushed," a voice said. "Private, why are you crying?"
"Ma'am, this arrow is mine. Look at the feathers. I marked them so I'd know how many savages I killed. We had bets."
Grimly. "Congratulations. You killed this one for sure."
"Only a child. I didn't know I'd be killing children. I didn't know--."
But Aaron could not run from his actions. Not yet. Not today. He had to live to receive the contempt of a nation he had betrayed.
Around him, Aaron saw death and pain and heroics. He closed his eyes in silent pain. He could not help here. He was no medic or nurse or doctor, but he knew someone who was.
Flicker
* * *
Aaron pounded on the door.
"Coming. Coming. What's the matter with you? Can't you give a man time to--?" The door swung open. Eyes, large and round, stared at him. "Why, Mister Turner! I never expected you to--boy--you look pale as a ghost. What is--?"
"Doctor Gunther." Aaron's voice was a low rasp. "You're needed. Please get your bags. People are dying."
Gunther's animated face became still and serious. Aaron saw a thong around his neck. Like Aaron, Gunther had a magnet in a pouch. A Talent Stone. That Stone augmented his natural Talent for healing. "How many? How bad?"
"Bad," Aaron said. "Too many. Far too many." He swallowed hard. "I think dozens."
"Give me a few minutes to gather my tools."
Aaron nodded and waited. Ten minutes later he transferred the doctor to the broch and then looked for Cathy
among the surviving Telven.
"She isn't here." Jerkak op bin Frae told him. "She left shortly after you did. Went further west to find the Yakka's. Said she'd be back in late fall because she wanted to winter with us again."
"I'll come back then," Aaron said. "Tell her I found an answer."
"I'll tell her," Jerkak promised.
Pray Gods, Aaron thought, this answer proved less bloody than the last.
He looked to the sky and sent his thoughts to the Two Gods and even to the One God of the Clan. "I swear," he whispered. "I swear on my soul that I will never kill a woman again. I swear it."
Chapter 30
Zisst purred in contentment. Settling deeper into Aaron's lap, it flattened out and rumbled hard enough to equal the biggest cat Aaron had ever seen. The animal's fox ears were straight, erect, and quivering. Its tail jerked in time with Aaron's strokes.
"That is the strangest animal," Heidi said. "It isn't one thing or another. It isn't even anything else. If I didn't know better, I would say Zisst changes its shape to suit its needs."
Aaron continued stroking. Zisst, he had discovered, was a loving animal who committed to its people with an intensity that refused to let go. Unlike people, Zisst did not demand rescue, or money, or pieces of Aaron's soul. Zisst only wanted love and attention.
Heidi shook her head. "I bet if you look at Zisst right now, you won't find any webbing between its limbs, but I swear on my father's grave that I saw Zisst leap from a cupboard and glide to the ground. It had webbing then. I checked."
Aaron did not answer. Instead, he continued stroking Zisst while enjoying the sensation of this, the only uncomplicated part of his life. He knew Heidi waited for him to speak. His continuing silence probably made him appear surly and arrogant, but he had expended all the energy he could spare these last few days. He was petting Zisst and had nothing left for anyone or anything else. For this moment, everything that was Aaron Turner was elsewhere. It lay in a grave on a hilltop; it was buried in a mass grave outside a broch; it was sucked into the bodies of people who were dead because of him.
Never again.
Heidi tried engaging his attention for more than an hour before giving up. Rising from her chair, she left him in peace.
Aaron's hand moved across fur.
Zisst purred.
* * *
Amanda dropped a long, pale green envelope onto her desk and stared at Aaron like the envelope should have some secret meaning.
"Go on," she demanded. "Open it."
Aaron listlessly lifted the envelope, slowly opened the flap, and pulled out a check. The figure on it, while not astronomical, was large enough to raise an eyebrow.
"The next one comes in three months," Amanda said. "Sturm and Cory came through sooner than they'd led us to believe. Your aspirin is now on the market, and startup costs have already been met. More important, the first antibiotics are in production, too. Congratulations. To date you have helped save the lives of sixteen people. That should make you happy."
Aaron dropped the check on the desk and closed his eyes. Sixteen people were alive because of information contained in his books. Sixteen. He wondered how that weighed against the huge numbers of dead his actions had produced. How many? Hundreds? Thousands.
"I won't be here next week." Amanda said.
That got his attention. Aaron opened his eyes.
"I have to move. These offices are far too small. I now have three associates and seven research assistants. I have Miss Celine, too. She is going to do me well. Can you imagine the advantages of having an associate who knows when a person is telling the complete truth?"
Aaron had little care for her expansion or his finances. Too much evil had been done because of power and money. Gods, he wanted nothing more than to fall into a hole and cover himself up. He wanted the world to just go away. Unfortunately, he could not do that.
"Close the door," he said. "We need to talk."
Amanda glanced to the door that was, at best, barely cracked. Without saying a word, she placed a hand against it and pushed so the latch would catch.
"Lock it."
Looking puzzled, she turned the lock.
Aaron held out his hand. In his palm was a horseshoe magnet, one of the two he had taken from beneath his buried silver. The magnet's lead covering was unwrapped, but that did not matter. It was safe in his hand since he was already bonded to his own Talent Stone.
"What is it?" Amanda asked.
"It's what I use as a Talent Stone." At least he could do one good thing. Amanda was not exactly his friend--she was both more and less than that--but she deserved this gift because she had tied her life to his.
Her face shifted. Mixed emotions and realizations and regrets seemed to run through her. She smiled and frowned, and then shook her head.
"Mister Turner--Aaron--thank you so much. You don't know how much your offer means to me." The beginnings of tears formed in her eyes. "I can't take it. No--that isn't right. I can take it, but it will be of no use to me. There's something you should know. I'm a very rare person."
Aaron let the magnet fall to the desk with a loud thunk, solid metal striking against wood. "I know you're a rare person."
Amanda's face was stricken. "But you don't know exactly how rare. I have no Talent. None. I've been tested six times, and every test shows the same thing. I have absolutely no innate special ability. I thank you for the offer. You don't know how much it means to me, but I can't use it."
"Then this would be useless for you?"
"I'm afraid so. The most I could do with it would be to sell it. Something like that is worth six fortunes. I doubt there are a dozen Talent Stones in all of Isabella."
Aaron flicked the magnet away with the tip of a finger. "Sell it then. Sell it or give it to someone worthy. The responsibility for this one isn't mine. It's yours." His mouth tasted sour. "I want nothing to do with it."
* * *
"Aaron," Felicity said, "your problem is that you're so tightly controlled that you're ripping yourself apart. You act as if you are to blame for all the bad things in the world, even if you never could have prevented them."
"We all have problems," Aaron said.
"We do," she agreed. "Your problems tend to be worse than most people's, but that doesn't seem to be enough for you. Whenever you reach some internal equilibrium, you borrow responsibility and guilt for the actions of other people and throw your balance off again." Her half smile grew sadly contemplative. "There are so many things we need to work out of you."
"I told you that you'd invent a system of psychology," Aaron said. "I just never realized I would be your test subject."
"So what are you thinking right now?"
"That I should have brought a few other books from my homeland. I know just what you need to read; only I no longer have access to the material." He spread his hands apart. "Sorry."
"Aaron!"
Right, he was doing it again. "Sorry," he repeated.
She studied him closely. "The strange thing is you really are sorry. Most people only use those words as a social lubricant, but when you use them they are true. I think that in many ways you're the most honest person I know." Her frown grew thoughtful. "We're going to have a long session today."
* * *
Aaron spent the next half-day searching for a new apartment. He wanted a place that was exclusive and private in a building with very good firewalls. Since those restrictions limited his selections, his apartment-hunting expedition was short.
The one he finally settled on was already furnished because the last resident left on vacation six months into a two-year lease and never came back. Her choice of furniture was fine by Aaron. He didn't have a taste or concern for such things anyway. A few of her personal items had been left behind, also, two signed paintings by obscure artists, a silver pitcher set on a high self, and a glass paperweight commemorating a visit to the N'Aark zoo that sat on top of a couch-side table.
He paid the landlord six m
onths' rent. If matters went as he planned, he would not see the woman again until the next rent check was due. This building was strictly for the well-to-do, full of apartments that were little more than playgrounds where men could meet their paramours, and for women who risked execution by meeting new lovers outside their marriages. Except for rare occasions, Aaron would be alone in the building during the weekdays, isolated from the rest of the world. He liked it that way.
He no longer wanted strong arms and a weak moral conscience for what he had to do next so he had no need of the people Felicity had found for him. Then again, as much as he respected the Guardians Amanda had hired, he didn't think they were the right for this job either. As a rule, they were too ethical, too civilized.
No, what he wanted were people who bent, but did not repeatedly break, rules. He wanted off-duty federal agents. He tracked down the main offices of the IFBIS.
Armand Crowley was not in, but Faith Larns was. She welcomed Aaron into her office and listened to his spiel for half an hour before stopping him.
"I've known about the situation for some time," she said. "At first I thought you were in the thick of it. The law says there's nothing we can do about the parts of the situation that we have proof of, and we can't break in without a warrant to get proof for the rest. The problem is we don't have enough evidence for a judge to give us the warrant we want." She tapped her fingertips repetitively on her desk. "I've tried."
She looked at him with bright eyes. "This is different. This is a case of the owner inviting us onto his property, so yes, I can do this. I could ask people who are off duty to do something unofficial. I'll get at least a dozen volunteers that way--but that isn't what I want to do. Instead, I want to approach my boss and tell him you suspect wrongdoing and want a simultaneous raid on all five of the buildings. I want to hit them with so much manpower that nobody will escape. It'll take two days to throw together."
"I didn't think official notice was possible," Aaron said. "The government isn't happy with me right now."